


Stories of the Second Self: Drained of Life

by John_Steiner



Series: Alter Idem [143]
Category: Serial Killers - Fandom, Urban Fantasy - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:08:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22705216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner
Summary: As a Bureau of Pentacaste Affairs officer, Teresa's FBI profiler experience brought her back to help federal investigators. Yet, the nature of her work was profile the suspect, so that the knowledge could be applied to similar cases. That meant approaching a killer in a time and place that was in the killer's advantage to conduct an interview that would help explain what personality types had been prone to turning into vampires in the years of Alter Idem.
Series: Alter Idem [143]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618813





	Stories of the Second Self: Drained of Life

Thinking the days of FBI field work were behind her, Teresa Sorenson found herself on loan from the Bureau of Pentacast Affairs four years after Alter Idem. The Federal Bureau of Investigation needed help with a case in Ohio, where they still hadn't been able to reestablish their Dayton field office.

At least this time Teresa's drive along interstate freeways- once a mundane trip and now ladened with treacherous conditions, came with a security escort. However, once she was in the relative safety of Cincinnati Teresa was left to her own devices and whatever help she could expect from Cincinnati PD.

Following news reports and reference physical copies of cold cases, Teresa saw similar patterns. Her job wasn't so much to track the killer down and arrest her as much as establish what made her tick. If the two bureaus could compile enough information about personality profiles they and the Restored National Academy of Sciences could establish who had been prone to supernatural Second Self changes.

Extrapolating from the cluster of crime scenes, Teresa had mapped out a likely range that the subject roamed for targets, and the ideal time to look for them. However, that meant wandering Cheviot, the westernmost portion of Cincinnati at night.

Advised by Cincinnati PD's Pentacaste Division that most werewolf street pack activity was centered in Norwood was no reassurance. Teresa had never personally met werewolves prior to talking with those hired by local police. However, that's not what gnawed at Teresa.

Teresa was reminded of that, when she saw a lone woman sitting on a bench away from street lights, with one leg over the other and her arm draped over the back of the bench. Even before Alter Idem alone at night like this would've planted a big bull's eye on any woman, and so Teresa was sure she'd found the subject she sought out.

It also helped that Teresa employed a few spells that she'd picked up from a rather helpful Granny Krüger and coven during a few visits over the last couple of years. Though, one thing occurred that Teresa hadn't counted on happening.

"Was it hard?" the woman on the bench asked, "Figuring it out?"

Teresa stopped in her tracks and her heart rate picked up. However, she subtly exhaled slowly before answering, "Admittedly, yes."

"That's good," the dark enshrouded woman said, and waved Teresa over. "So, are you human or Fae?"

"Fae," Teresa answered, glad for the illusion spell hiding her nine-point antlers and, just as critically, the infrared of her body heat that would've given away how nervous Teresa was.

"You're not a cop," the woman deduced, "or else you'd have given some kind of signal by now to have me arrested. There's no way you'd have traced me here without knowing what you know."

"It's true," Teresa confessed as she stood before the woman confused, "But how did you know I was looking for you?"

"While I'm not into magic I realized those dreams I had weren't normal," the woman replied, and then stood up. "This midnight mystery meeting is too silly. Let's find somewhere else to talk."

Teresa debated revealing that she knew Lillian's name, as Lillian's unusually pale skin at last fell under weak street illumination. Yet, Teresa decided against it as possibly triggering a bad reaction. After all, Lillian hadn't updated her drivers license or state ID's nor earned an EMT card that other vampires in the city were required to have on them if found with blood or would-be donors.

"If this isn't a setup why are you interested in me?" Lillian asked, as she led Teresa across the street.

"Your methods changed after you died," Teresa alluded to the way Lillian once dispatched her victims, "However, you don't pick out the same ones anymore. That's the interesting difference I wanted to ask you about."

"Not going to say what I do, huh?" Lillian laid it out there like she had nothing to hide, despite the trail of bodies she'd left in her wake.

"What changed?" Teresa wondered, and then added after a moment's thought. "You know, other than the obvious?"

"I suppose you hadn't wandered through all my dreams then," Lillian said, as she approached a door to a vacant diner. "This is where I like to hang out even if I'm not catching a meal."

"There's only so much I could get through witnessing," Teresa replied.

Lillian opened the door and entered, but turned to find that Teresa didn't immediately follow her in and appeared to realize why. "Oh."

With a rather lax hand gesture, Lillian flipped on the lights, which to Teresa's surprise still worked-- although half of them flickered.

"Thank you," Teresa said, and finally stepped inside. "That's better."

"If you say so." Lillian picked a booth in a center isle where few of the lights worked right and sat down.

"Do lights really bother you that much?" Teresa wanted to know, but resigned herself to the other bench across from Lillian.

"I haven't turned on a light wherever I stayed in four years," Lillian said, looking up at the weak fluorescent bar lights without squinting. "My eyes can adjust to lights well enough if they're not too bright. Just that it stopped feeling necessary. I've run into other vampires who will use lights indoors. Not sure what they're trying to prove to the beaters."

"Beaters?" Teresa asked for clarification with a sideways glance.

"Your people," Lillian waved at Teresa. "The living."

"Ah," Teresa recognized the reference made, "Heartbeat. Speaking of which, what do you make of this term thrown around; nightcrawler?"

"Yawn," Lillian attempted dramaticism at being bored, though even that came across emotionally flat. "Everyone is throwing slurs at everyone else. There are worse things they could call me, and it's not like I care."

"You cared enough of what they thought in Belfield, North Dakota." Teresa knew saying it was a risk, but it was time to prod enough that Lillian would open up.

"You know how that started," Lillian offered, "Don't you?"

"Vigilantes were everywhere, largely because governments couldn't be," Teresa suggested, "You would be rare indeed to have held that personally against them the way you did. After that night you went through their families until the rest fled. Then you chased down those fleeing on foot who were left behind by others with working cars. Was that sending a message?"

"Sent to who?" Lillian questioned with a hint of sinister dripping from her words. "I killed everyone in that hunting party who came after me."

"There must have been a reason." Teresa tested the waters further, and then considered something. "You wanted to see them afraid before they died. That's it, isn't it."

Lillian just eyed Teresa suggestively.

"You wanted to feel fear again," Teresa said, realizing she'd hit on something from the way Lillian's expression darkened. "Before, it was about sleaze bags and cheaters. Then you spontaneously died, and after waking realized that your emotional intensity dampened."

"You're supposed to say that the common thread of serial killers is a lack of empathy," Lillian teased, "That's the common statement of professional profilers, isn't it?"

Teresa felt her fingers grow cold, but her pointed ears flushed with warmth behind the false front she put up. "What makes you think I'm a profiler?"

"As I said, I'm not into magic," Lillian reiterated, laid back as ever and her gaze wandered. "But whatever you did to get into my head also let me go through yours. Really, why wouldn't the FBI come after me now that they and BPA know who I am?"

"They don't." Teresa knew well enough that only honesty would serve her at this point. "I only had a hint of your name from the dream, and I couldn't be sure that was who you are. I still don't have your last name. Most people don't go thinking their own names to themselves."

"And you're not here for criminal investigation," Lillian guessed further, "So why come at all? What's the point if you're not busting me?"

"It is an investigation of a sort," Teresa admitted, "A number of us in BPA are trying to figure out why Pentacastes turned into what they are. For instance, not every vampire is a serial killer, and a few serial killers didn't turn into vampires or much anything else. Everyone has given up trying to resolve how we all turned. Why is the bigger deal now."

"Why do you think?" Lillian seemed almost interested in knowing.

"For yourself?" Teresa prepared for this moment. "I think you were dead inside before your body caught up with you."

Lillian's face and posture firmed up ever so slightly, though her forward tilt brought more shadow onto her pallid face to match her jet black eyes. "Emotionally dead is it? I could lash out at you for saying that."

"Of course not," Teresa dared venture, though found herself inwardly shrinking away, as she added, "because you don't think that way."

Lillian softened her posture again, though she stood up. Teresa was unnerved by Lillian strolling silkily over and leaning in. In Lilian's hand was a stack of pages Teresa recognized, when Lillian let them drop on the table in front of her.

"No," Lillian agreed, and closed in to put her face inches from Teresa's own as she finished whispering into Teresa's ear. "I don't, do I?"

Teresa closed her golden brown eyes, and realized she wished she hadn't spent the last few weeks to get so close to understand a serial killing vampire. "Boundaries."

"You try so hard to sound firm," Lillian observed, "that I can't tell if you have the resolve to stand strong to whatever rules you believe in. I've always struggled with that. It wasn't until high school that I found out a certain expression on people's faces was part of being scared.

"There was this girl once, back when I was in high school," Lillian withdrew to her seat as she delved into memory. "To this day, I don't know what crawled up her ass about me. I wasn't anyone special back then, so it's not like I was competing for her friends or catty shit like that. She just hated me--. I only knew because people in school kept talking about. 'Kelly's gonna get me,' they'd say."

"You're not going to blame your actions on her, are you?" Teresa said in reference to the long list of bodies linked to Lillian's name.

"No," Lillian closed her eyes and shook her head, then offered a smile that never reached her eyes. "By then I'd already started with two people. I didn't kill them, though. I was working up to it, and... as you say, I wanted to see what fear looked like on someone's face. Experimenting, is what you profilers probably say."

"And Kelly?" Teresa was genuinely interested in the outcome.

"She was my first." Lillian's expression just went blank in reflection; blank as if she were suddenly a mannequin but still able to talk. "There's this one hall in the corner of my school's basement floor. There were no classrooms or lockers nearby, so hardly anyone walked through it. I took a phone that belonged to one of her friend's and texted her to meet me there."

"And she just did it?" Teresa asked, "No suspicion?"

"Maybe she thought her friend was going to give her the dirt on me," Lillian pondered with a dismissive head shake, still with no emotion affixed to her face. "Or she was a pill popper and her friend gave her prescription meds from home. I'll never know. But she arrived. The hall lights are like these. A lot didn't work, and others flickered. I kept my head down, and I changed my hair color the previous night. Put on an outfit I hadn't worn to school before."

Teresa imagined this girl getting as close to teenager Lillian as Lillian had gotten to her just a moment ago. "How did she react when she realized who you were?"

"I didn't give her time, at first," Lillian admitted, her expression as dead as ever. "Shoved a wooden pencil right through her chin into her mouth. That low scream was, I guess, pain and surprise together. She stumbled back leaned forward grabbing at her chin while blood seeped from her mouth. It's not like the movie, you know, where blood spewed out. No, it was slow."

"Oh god," Teresa whispered under her breath as she looked down and shut her eyes at the thought.

"I grabbed her hair and yanked her head back to see into her face," Lillian recalled with eyes staring across time. "She didn't react. Just stared at me like she couldn't believe it. So I shoved my palm against the pencil, until it pierced the roof of her mouth. I looked around to see if anyone was watching, and by the time I was sure no one was around she already bled to death. She collapsed onto the floor before I realized it.

"I dragged her into a facilities room that I knew didn't get used much," Lillian went on to describe, "This was before I figured out the need to plan these things. I scoured the room until finding some sheet of plastic and covered her with it. Went to the girl's room and cleaned up what little I got on me, and went on with the rest of the school day. Then, at night, I got some things together and swiped my mom's car. I went back to the school to get her body and hide it. I'll bet your people didn't know about that one, did you? Outside my profile, obviously."

Those black soulless eyes stared straight at Teresa, not quite as accusatory as intrigued by Teresa's learning this story for the first time. "It's true, I didn't."

"I think you're right," Lillian again grew distant and devoid of expression. "We're all dead inside. Maybe that's why I don't get cold sweats at the thought of being caught some day. I really don't have any feeling about it at all. And to imagine we're made immortal without a reason for it."

It was like a revelation to Lillian, Teresa recognized from the way Lillian looked to one side.


End file.
